


A Shape to Fill a Lack

by tomato_greens



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Dyslexia, Gen, MOM FEELINGS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 10:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate had been an impatient teacher, but he didn’t blame her; he’d gotten a look at the note his high school principal had given her. <i>Aggressive</i>, it had said. <i>Hostile. Lashes out to distract from scholastic deficiencies.</i> Frankly it was amazing she’d had the patience to help him out at all––and she had helped him, those first few weeks, the quiet space and her red-polished fingernail sorting out the knot of letters in his brain, but then they’d hit a bad week and she’d thrown a pencil across the room.</p><p>“I’m––sorry,” he’d said, flinching away from her.</p><p>“Don’t be,” she’d sighed, and then flicked her gaze at him. Her grin slid sideways. “Good thing you’re cute.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shape to Fill a Lack

**Author's Note:**

> Written on [tumblr](http://tomato-greens.tumblr.com/post/35456031542/helenish-lavishness-helenish) in response to a gif set and people's soulbreaking comments. Title is from William Faulkner's _As I Lay Dying_ because I am ridic.

It’s not that Derek couldn’t read at all; he’d learned the alphabet just like the next kid. But he’s been broken longer than his family’s been dead, and he’s always known he’s stupid––he looks at anything more complicated than a menu and the letters swim together, away from his slow understanding.

Kate had been an impatient teacher, but he didn’t blame her; he’d gotten a look at the note his high school principal had given her. _Aggressive_ , it had said. _Hostile. Lashes out to distract from scholastic deficiencies._ Frankly it was amazing she’d had the patience to help him out at all––and she had helped him, those first few weeks, the quiet space and her red-polished fingernail sorting out the knot of letters in his brain, but then they’d hit a bad week and she’d thrown a pencil across the room.

“I’m––sorry,” he’d said, flinching away from her.

“Don’t be,” she’d sighed, and then flicked her gaze at him. Her grin slid sideways. “Good thing you’re cute.”

“What––I mean––thanks,” he’d said, but then they’d been kissing, her nails carding through the soft hair at the nape of his neck. No one had ever touched him there except his mom.

-

After the fire, Laura had wanted him to get his GED like she had; she brought it up every six months like clockwork, but every time he tried to pick up a study guide all he could see was Kate’s plum-colored lipstick and the thick black smoke that smelled of his mother’s blood. 

“Just––get over it, Derek, c’mon!” she’d snapped once, her hand rough on his shoulder, and even as he shifted and lunged forward he knew she didn’t mean it. It was the only time she’d ever submitted to him, her head down, her eyes glaring red at the floor, her shoulder bleeding through the rip on her shirt.

“Don’t,” he’d gritted out, and left the apartment to stomp his frustration away. When he’d come back, Laura had handed him chamomile tea and rubbed her cheek on the ruff of his hair. 

“It’s okay, you know,” she’d said before he could even think about apologizing. “We’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

Derek wasn’t in the practice of believing people, but he’d patted her hand where it was resting on his chin and smiled without even a hint of canine. “Yeah,” he’d said.

“I love you,” Laura had said—the last time. Three weeks later she was dead. 

-

When Victoria Argent comes to him on the night of the full moon, Derek’s dozing and listening to _As I Lay Dying_ on tape. His Walkman is as old as he is, but it still works so he hasn’t thrown it out yet. He doesn’t quite understand the frenetically glacial pace of the novel, but it’s almost comforting––Derek makes bad decisions and is terminally stupid, so the world is still turning apace. He’s trying to wean the betas off of his presence in hopes that it will improve their control, so he’s sitting near the entrance to the abandoned train depot, staring at his shoes and feeling out of place.

Two severe high heels housing extremely pale feet suddenly appear in his field of vision. He looks up to see Victoria Argent staring down at him, every inch of her haughty––no, not quite, he realize. He recognizes the stance from years of knowing Laura. Proud.

Derek pauses the book.

“I’ll never forgive you for this,” she says, her mouth set in a firm line. Derek just barely manages to avoid flinching, averting his eyes––the bite had been a mistake, though he’s sure no one would ever believe him. She’d somehow gotten the upper hand and it had been so long since he’d had a woman above him that he’d panicked completely. It was hideously embarrassing, and the idea of biting someone who didn’t ask for it was so nightmarish that he couldn’t quite admit that he’d done it. “But I’d never forgive myself if I abandoned my daughter when she needed me most.”

Derek puts the Walkman in his pocket, sticks the headphones through his beltloop. “Yeah,” he says, and stands up. “Yeah, of course.”

The next morning, nobody’s dead. “I’m sorry, you know,” Derek says.

“I don’t really care,” Victoria says, her eyes fading from amber.

-

Victoria is terrifyingly competent, which is no surprise, but seems to be convinced that Derek has it in him to be as effective, which is an utterly bizarre oversight as far as he’s concerned. In six months she’s helped him force the alpha pack into humiliated submission, gotten Erica, Boyd, and Isaac on the straight and narrow, gotten Scott on board with the pack, nursed Lydia and Jackson through no fewer than three devastating break-ups, and convinced Stiles that he’s both as valued and needed as he really is, not to mention fostering her daughter’s constructively murderous tendencies. In ten months Beacon Hills is almost back to how Derek remembers it from his childhood, touched by the darkness that follows wolves but far from drowning in it. Derek has absolutely no idea how she did any of it.

“Come on, Derek, focus,” she says to him, her voice sharp. “Just read the damn papers and tell me what you think. I can’t lead this pack by myself.”

“Leave me alone,” Derek roars, and pushes away from the table, ready to run into the woods and rip his teeth into anything he can get them on, practically ready to tear his own skin. 

Her hand whips out and clamps onto his shoulder, her blunt human nails digging into him. “Derek, look at me,” she says. He moves his face to face hers, but keeps his eyes on the floor. She tightens her hand. “Derek,” she says again, and he closes his eyes for a few long seconds before he has to meet her gaze.

“Just leave me alone,” he says again, softer, feeling like he’s about to break, and her pale, intense eyes narrow in some strange combination of suspicion and sympathy. Derek doesn’t know if they’re friends; he wishes they could be, but he’s twenty-four and a perpetual fuck-up, hands-down the dumbest person he knows, and Victoria Argent is not a woman who suffers fools gladly. 

“I can’t do that, Derek,” Victoria says, and draws him in. Derek bares his neck in a way he never would with anyone else, readies himself for the kill. He misses his mom anyway, and he’s so tired––he’ll be glad to see her again. But where he expects his breath to leave him in a violent lash of scarlet and bone, instead he finds the wind knocked out of him because Victoria’s got her arms around him, one hand supporting his neck as if her were a child. “Take a breath,” she says, and he does, shudderingly. She pulls him in tighter, impossibly, and he finds his eyes squeezed shut, his head tucked into her shoulder. “Okay? Okay. So take a breath and read the papers. We’ll get through this.”

“I c-can’t,” says Derek, and winces to hear his voice so raw. He hasn’t stuttered since he as eight and he decided to stop talking so much. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” says Victoria, so reasonable.

She won’t be able to forgive him for this, Derek things, this proof of his inherent idiocy, but he says, “I can’t read it,” quick, like ripping the packing out of a wound. “I can’t read.”

Victoria stands back from him, keeping him at arms’ length; he looks away, ashamed. “Well,” she says, slowly. She doesn’t sound disappointed, not yet, but Derek braces himself for the inevitable. “Okay, then. Okay.”

Derek tries to step farther away from her. “I’ll go,” he offers. 

Victoria looks at him sharply, a shade away from pity. “I don’t think so,” she says. He closes his eyes against her anger, but then she says, “I was a teacher before I married Chris.”

“Oh,” says Derek, not sure what to do with this information. 

“How do you think I got the job at the high school?” she says, sounding amused, but not like she’s laughing at him, exactly. “It’s been years since I was in a classroom, but I think I’ve probably still got it.”

Derek finds his shoulders have somehow lowered themselves from where he’d had them hunched around his ears. “Okay,” he says. The world feels uncertain on its axis.

“Come on,” she says, and leads him over to the table, sits him down. “Come on, I’ll read it out loud for now so you can focus, and we can work on your stuff in the morning.”

“What?” says Derek. “I mean––I––okay.”

“Don’t take all day, Hale, we’ve got business to get to,” Victoria says, one side of her mouth tilting up. “The whole world doesn’t revolve around you.”


End file.
